Breadcrumbs & Pasta

Maybe you didn’t know that this was what all your pasta dishes need.

Breadcrumb Topping

  • A glug of olive oil
  • Half an onion, in moons
  • Garlic, chopped
  • 2 handfuls Panko breadcrumbs
  • Salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, thyme, nutritional yeast, or whatever flavors you like, to taste
  • A long pasta, like spaghetti or angel hair, or spaghetti squash

Sautee the onions and garlic until browned. Add the breadcrumbs and spices, stir and watch for the breadcrumbs to brown. Top and stir into your prepared pasta or squash.

I added some savory sauteed kale on top, seasoned with onion powder, garlic, salt, and a splash of soy sauce. Kale chips would also be a nice addition.

Takes butter noodles to the next level.

Losing Faith in my GI

My gastroenterologist got me through the worst, and I want to put that up front, first and foremost.

Her aggressive plan for treating my worst bout of Crohn’s Disease put me in remission The First Time. That is a feat, and I am so thankful for that. Months of steroids cut the inflammation, and a year and a half of Remicade infusions kept me from flaring (I guess?) enough to heal my guts.

What I didn’t hear from my doctor, was information about my nagging symptoms of fatigue, brain fog, joint and muscle pain, etc etc etc. I wondered why I was having symptoms if I was clinically in remission. I wondered why remission was based on blood tests and inflammation levels and not on the symptoms I was experiencing.

I know now that it takes a Long Ass Time for our bodies to heal from the massive trauma of colitis. I saw that endoscopy, and it didn’t look good. But a year and a half after my treatment, my guts were almost back to where they were before Crohn’s. I didn’t get advice from my doctor about the time it takes to heal, or what to do about symptoms. Just the same refrain, “Let’s increase your Remicade and see what happens.”

As I have discussed before, numerous times, Remicade is NOT an affordable or accessible drug. I am still paying off medical debt, $400 a month, with no end in sight, because of my Remicade infusions. When it came to a breaking point, I went to my doctor.

“I can’t afford the Remicade, we need another treatment. What about diet?”

“I am a medical doctor, and my job is to prescribe medications.”

Well, that’s weird, because I thought the job of medical doctors was to help their patients stop being sick, and at least offer palliative care.

She looked into a couple other biologic treatments, and some of them were vastly more affordable than Remicade. But to get out of the lost-income-medical-debt-spiral, I wasn’t sure that these treatments, which had clinical response rates barely over placebo, would be worth the money, or the side-effects.

And that’s basically where the discussion ended. I cancelled my upcoming GI appointment and I stopped taking Remicade.

People living with IBD and chronic illness need more options than medication.

  • We need doctors that understand our illness affects every part of our lives, and provide us with guidance and therapeutic services to support our recovery to our “new normal.”
  • We need doctors that can envision a “new normal” that is pretty close to our old normal.
  • We need doctors that see us as more than a dumpster for expensive, heavily marketed drugs with terrible side effects.
  • We need doctors that understand chronic illness limits our ability to hold full time jobs, and limits our access to health insurance, and will provide us with solutions that are affordable and accessible.
  • We need assistance with activities of daily life.
  • We need multiple therapeutic options, including mental health, physical therapy, nutrition, personal trainers, and lifestyle advocates that can help us transform our everyday life into one that allows us to thrive.
  • We need a robust, single payer healthcare system that supports all of these needs at no cost to us.

No one chooses to get a chronic illness. We don’t opt in. And we shouldn’t have to bankrupt our future because we got sick and want to feel better.

Lazy Whole Wheat Bread

  • 3 cups whole wheat flour
  • 1 Tablespoon salt
  • 3 cups warm water
  • Yeast

Put the yeast in the water. Put the salt in the flour. Then put the yeasty water in the salty flour. Stir it together until it has a homogeneous consistency.

Cover bowl with a towel and let sit for at least 4 hours. At 18 hours, it will develop a nutty sourdough flavor.

Pour dough into a buttered loaf pan. Cook at 420° for 1 hour. Cut in half to make sure it’s cooked thru, then let cool on wire rack.

Serving size 1/12th loaf, 100 calories.

Eat Ur Greens

Kale chips are like the crouton of the vegetable world. Now add greens to any dish as a texture, soaked with savory flavor. I usually put a little bit of oil on mine, but I think you could sub a sprinkle of water if you’re concerned about fat intake or oil doesn’t sit well with you.

Kale Chips

  • Coarsely chopped kale, the curly kind holds flavor well
  • 1-2 T oil
  • seasoning: garlic powder, onion powder, chili powder, nutritional yeast, salt, pepper, etc

Mix well, lay seasoned kale on a baking sheet in 1 layer. Cook for 15 mins at 400F.

If you layer it deep, the top will get crunchy but the bottom will not. Depending on how you are using the kale, you might want this effect. Like it spicy? Add hot sauce or cayenne pepper.

Makes a great topping for: pizza, rice & beans, lentils, burritos, tacos, salad, anything you want a delicate crispy crunch and a bang of savory flavor in your face. Add to pizza in the last 15 minutes of cooking. Or cook separate and lay on top. I don’t care, it’s your life.

Online Learning and Equity

America’s public schools do not have the resources to switch to online learning. America’s public schools are woefully underfunded. America’s public schools cannot provide free computers and internet access to every home in America so that children can learn during this pandemic because the US Government, and especially the current administration, actively undermines the US public school system.

Jim Crow exists and is alive and well in our segregated cities and our segregated school system. The link between race and poverty in our country has only been exacerbated by neoliberalism, deindustrialization, and repeated crises in capitalism that continually funnel public wealth into the coffers of the mega-rich. This reality is written all over America’s decrepit public school buildings, it’s lack of classroom resources, and it’s mismanagement.

But can’t Google and Spectrum and Amazon step in to provide computers and internet for America’s schools? After all, their untaxed profits could easily provide this. Some might argue they have a moral obligation. We cannot accept hand outs or charity or crumbs thrown from Tech Monopolies as a replacement for just economic policy. Policy that provides for basic social needs like safe housing, access to nutritious food, access to health care, and access to clean air and water on a livable planet. We need to support the Green New Deal. We need it now more than ever, and we cannot trust the electoral two party system to deliver it. We have to elect insurgent local politicians and practice Mutual Aid on the grassroots level.

Teachers across the country, myself included, are waking up thinking about if our students can eat, if families can access relief aid, and, of course, if our students are doing their homework. Access to education is a human right, and a legal right of US citizens. Universal public education was born out of the flames of Emancipation and Radical Reconstruction, because our ancestors knew that democracy and a just society could only be possible with a population empowered by knowledge and critical thinking.

The NEA’s endorsement of Joe Biden is a sick joke and goes against every value that has led me to commit to a life of public service. He is a puppet of capitalism.

I spent my last tank of gas today hand delivering homework packets to a handful of families. We have been calling families multiple times a day to arrange for them to pick up printed homework packets. We have been distributing scientific calculators, and chromebooks to our early college students who have switched to remote learning for their college courses. We have two weeks to figure out how to deliver quality and necessary education to our young people without putting ourselves or our school community at risk. Online learning is, frankly, not an option for many public schools in this country, my own public charter school included.

Only through meeting these basic needs of access can we transform US Public Schools into the vehicle for social transformation we need it to be.

Practical Skills for Living in a Pandemic

Basic Cooking

Just…start with an onion and try not to burn it.

Coping with Isolation

People with chronic illness will go through many periods of isolation in their lives. That’s what happens when you are too sick, or weak, or fatigued, or in pain, to leave your bed or your home. Work is mostly out of the question, and even work from home will be interrupted by projectile vomiting at times. You’re lucky when a loved one shows up, because Tom cat doesn’t even want to listen to you talk anymore. Yes I am writing about myself.

Living in isolation requires significant mental health training and setting good boundaries. I’m sure there’s lots of other blogs that talk about that shit so you should probably google search it. Look into meditation, take lots of naps, set up zones in your home. Keep your bedroom just for sleeping and scoodilypooping so you can sleep better. Develop some routines. Make a spot for work that you can leave and have leisure time somewhere else, even if its a different chair in the same room. You have to trick your body into thinking that everything is normal.

Finally, learn to reach out with your peach out. Call a friend instead of texting. Yell at your neighbor across the street. Make jokes with the other people who were waiting for a paycheck last weekend and were totally broke when every other person was buying enough frozen dinners and hand sanitizer and you KNOW they bought up all the dried whole grains that I eat for every meal EVEN THOUGH it’ll be a last resort not a staple DAMN IT.

Embrace Uncertainty

You don’t really have another choice. Acceptance might eventually replace the crippling anxiety and compassion fatigue. You don’t have to go all the way to nihilism.

Mutual Aid

Organize the people you know to meet our material needs. Figure out ways to feed ourselves, fight evictions, keep utilities on, and otherwise take care of our basic needs. Build countervailing power through community organizing. Mutual Aid is about building the infrastructures for the world we want to live in today. There are many historical examples, especially those responding to natural disasters exacerbated by climate change and neoliberal capitalism. The trick is now how to do that while social distancing.

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